I have online virtual cemeteries for several cemeteries but worked on uploading all the Voigts and Ritters interred at Bethany German Lutheran, Laurel Hill East, Laurel Hill West, Westminster, Mount Vernon, Mount Peace and Leverington cemeteries. Many were reinterred from dysfunctional cemeteries such as Glenwood located at 27th and Ridge, Odd Fellows at 24th and Diamond, American Mechanics at 22nd and Diamond and the German Lutheran cemetery that once was located at 31st and Lehigh Ave.
After all these years of researching, I still cannot wrap my head around the fact these cemeteries were closed, and bodies moved as a result of “eminent domain” so housing projects could be built in its place. First, city politicians and urban planners banned new burials stating the cemeteries were overcrowded, then the cemeteries fell into ruin from lack of funds. Secondly, those same politicians and planners condemned the cemeteries because they viewed these cemeteries as undeveloped land and it was cheaper than tearing down neighborhoods or spending large amounts of money for commercial property.
Mass exhumation began. Bodies were dug up. Few notices were placed in the newspapers to alert descendants of the plan to unearth their ancestors. Families who discovered the city’s plan went to court with deeds in hand stating they owned the land where their relatives were buried, but were told by the courts that “the deeds” only gave rights to burial in that space and not ownership. The courts determined it was more important to provide housing, highways and parking lots for the living than preserving the cemeteries of the dead. Families demanded that the city pay to have their loved ones reinterred at the cemeteries of their chosen. The city agreed so some families had them reinterred. Because there were few notices in the newspapers and most families were left unaware, the courts allowed the mass exhumation of bodies and had them reinterred in mass graves. Since they thought it was “too expensive” to move tombstones, the city sold them to contractors who threw them in the Delaware to act as a foundation for the Betsy Ross Bridge.
On a more personal note, I remember my Uncle Gene telling me how the caskets were piled up on each other. He said, some of the caskets were old and deteriorated to the point where you could see the decomposed bodies. He was horrified that the contractors in charge of exhuming the graves were careless and displayed a lack of dignity for the deceased.
In 2013 as modern day contractors were working on a playground built over the once burial ground of Odd Fellows, they encountered 28 caskets of remains that were never exhumed and reinterred prompting the creation of new laws that made the courts stop new developments and appoint state archaeologists to properly document, exhume and reinter at the city’s expense that which should have occurred in years past.
Sometimes I feel like a detective doing genealogy work. Creating the virtual cemeteries then adding in the ancestor’s information had given me the opportunity to review dozens and dozens of death certificates and burial records to confirm where they were buried and of course following the paper trail if the ancestor’s remains were moved from the original place of burial to their present place of burial. Though the Ritter line had their share of early deaths, the Voigts had an overwhelming number of early deaths especially children under the age of 10 years old. The records clearly display the dangers of childhood at a time when vaccinations and antibiotics were yet to be discovered. Whereas several women in the Ritter line lost their lives to “Childbed Fever”, the Voigt line lost children to diphtheria, Typhus, spinal meningitis, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and asthma.
